The Student Veterans Association partnered with UT’s Zeta Psi fraternity chapter to host a Veterans Day event on Tuesday to help student veterans better adjust to college life.
“Even though UT is a veteran-serving institution, a lot of veterans do struggle to integrate with campus life,” said Gregorio Sanchez, a UT graduate and former vice-president of Zeta Psi.
Sanchez said many veterans transitioning into college life not only struggle to adjust to a less structured lifestyle, but also experience difficulty finding student groups that will accept them. Sanchez said many veterans are looking for ways to be more involved on campus.
“Your whole identity (in the military) comes down to a rank, a nametape, experience, and then you step into the college world, and now you’re essentially just another student,” Sanchez said. “People may have certain prejudices against someone who’s older. They don’t really know how to communicate with someone who could be from a different generation (with) military experience.”
Zeta Psi also aimed to send a message to student veterans that their fraternity, with its strong military presence and history, could be a community that would allow them to keep growing their skills after service.
“We’re the most military-friendly fraternity,” said Hari Mohil, current president of Zeta Psi and a government senior. “We want to give (veterans) a place to grow, especially in a place as structured as a fraternity.”
Orlando Arriaga, an electrical engineering third-year transfer student and veteran said he wished he had known about the fraternity earlier.
“This would have been amazing,” Arriaga said. “It seems like what they’re doing here would have been what I wanted to do every day.”
